SpokenWord Paris

Monday 19th December, Au Chat Noir
76 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud
Metro Parmentier/Couronnes
Sign up in the bar from 8pm
Underground poetry from 9pm

Just read that George Whitman of Shakespeare & Co has died.

Without George, alternately infuriating and a sheer delight, and his crazy-wonderful bookshop, there would be no SpokenWord Paris, no Other Writers’ Group, no issue.ZERO and no Strangers in Paris. And so much else. How many of us would even have stayed in Paris? Not me.

David

by David
This was the launch of issue.ZERO’s Winter 2011-2012 number and it was packed. The photo is actually before it got really packed! Sold a lot of issue.ZEROs and we’re now well on the way towards making back the printing costs. Click on the link above for details of how to get hold of a copy for 10 euros. Or come to the last SpokenWords of 2011 – Monday Dec 12th & 19th – and get one from us – Au Chat Noir, 76 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, 75011 Metro Parmentier/Couronnes. Sign up in the bar form 8pm, poetry starts 9pm.

On to a kaleidoscopic condensed poem of a report of words spoken and sung:

The waves brought a handful of fists
An alligator
The sudden pop of kneecap to neck bone
A foot like hailstones
There’s always someone in the family who takes the jibes
I’m so mean I make medicine sick
He looks bad enough to get shot
Smells of tar
Is hard at the seams
Made of peacock feathers
While syringes kiss
And I melt like a marshmallow sticky on a campfire
Everyone had a cigarette and cocktail that night
Even the children
As Fermat’s Last Theorem stripped off in Hollywood
Searching for harlequin who rode in on blue flames
Thick with memory and flesh
Tongue sulphur-thick
C’mon Mister – Get your jabberwocky out!

Hélène improvising

I’m killing the old mailing list (that works through meetup).

Crowd.

Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome to Spoken Word Paris. Thanks Troy. Mandoline opens, Jo plays the piano this time, James Navè having light issues (that’s my fault). David reading Pity le pauvre parisien: Who d’you think you are, Johnny Halliday?

Patrick.

Griffin’s got boyscouts in expedition between his legs. Come taste the poet. Em Johnstone with “Men are from mars, and girls are from Venus” and “Beautiful Pollution”. Listen to this one in a more domestic atmosphere. Lucy G. about traumatic sex, Brandon “eat me, drink me …..and Calvin Kline”, Kate operating necessary surgery. James “In high definition across the street, she pretended not to look”. Troy took this song called Festival from Sigur Ros, screwed the islandic and the gibberish syllables, rewrote a poem, sat down at piano and sang it. Holy Guacamole!!! Whadda xxxx is gibberish? A famous poem in gibberish is Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. Please Johnny Depp, can you read it for us?

Troy.

A new Chris Newens production, I just remember one line, ehm two words: “Faboulous breasts”. Jason Marcos: dry salt and many tears”. Felicia: two poems for the same person, some sappy shit (those are her words not mine), Megan Fernandes, the poetry editor of Strangers in Paris, is back in town “dating the taxodermist.” Check out her books and blog. Alberto’s for Megan panegyrical remix “Phenomenal Womegan”. Georginas backstabbing and opening secret files from Alberto’s sketchbook, secret dialogues during a lectures on “Dante and the conception of authority in the middle ages.” (“enormous huge gigantic boobs)” Sara and Anne “J’ai eu une enfance dificile”: Maxim slightly misunderstood the meaning of featured reader, so Miss Peacock and Amelia read when we were already overtime, but we made it! See you next monday here in Rue Jean Pierre Timbaud, down in the basement au Chat Noir!
Alberto

By Alberto.

We are changing venue every monday. Tonight we are downstairs au Chat Noir. We’ve been there before but was faraway more violent. I have a deja vu, let’s see how it was: when Writers get Violent. This time was less brutal but not less emotional. Kate Noakes opens it with her Ophelia. Lucy A bought a conditioner for dirty hair. Stay tuned she’s got a show on December 9 and 10. Further details coming soon on this website. Bethany: Fuck connotations, I have no pussy. James Navè started writing in hospital: Where the balls go. Then for the first time on our stage, James Simpson with a poem called “My journey on line 4”.
Second Stanza:

From porte d’orleans to porte de clignacourt
Central & straight goes good old line 4.
“But its better than london” I hear you say
“And you get phone signal to text & play”
A carriageful of people shouting down their phone
Angry & annoyed that they’ll be late home
No I prefer the british way of suffering in silence
And thats what im doing but im sensing violence
Especially now that an accordian has started
And someone around me has definitely farted.

Check out his weekly radio show.
Amber didn’t want to read poetry: “’ cause my mum is a poet and I’ve got issues.” So she told a story that could be entitled: “I thought suppository was a french thing.” Naser’s Sufi: “As I bathe in the eternal sunrise… I shower my mind with the lucid teardrops of time.” Alberto’s afternoon on roftoops. “I walk on rooftops to watch the others and avoid meeting them.” Felicia: Is there a first stage? Death. Light Leaks were smoking (what?) before playing. Their new LP is almost ready.Mandoline in french: “…tu me meteorite, tu me fragilize, tu me….” Jo. More Jo . Jason. More Jason. Lucile, Troy wants just tenderness with a belt, and then you’ll remember him when you’re hit by a car, Jasmine E. Way hasn’t written anything in 8 years, Georgina …oopps I was upstairs ordering a Gin Tonic, Lucy G: There is a song for the dead children. Kelly’s Very cold friday. The Maxx: Byron on Speed: “I have Jesus in my veins” plus two excerpts from his favourite author Malcolm Lowry, one was Delirium in Veracruz.

DELIRIUM IN VERA CRUZ (by Malcolm Lowry)

Where has the tenderness gone, he asked the mirror
Of the Biltmore Hotel, cuarto 216. Alas,
Can its reflection lean against the glass
Too, wondering where I have gone, into what horror?
Is that it staring at me now with terror
Behind your frail, tilted barrier? Tenderness
Was here, in this very retreat, in this
Place, its form seen, cries heard by you. What error
Is here? Am I that forked rashed image?
Is this the ghost of love which you reflected?
Now with a background of tequila, stubs, dirty collars,
Sodium perborate, and a scrawled page
To the dead, telephone disconnected?
… He smashed all the glass in the room. (Bill: $50)

James. I loved his song, but he disappeared before I could ask him about it. And the ex-virgin, nowadays whore Naser closed la soirèe. Good Stuff Guys! We loved the night, we loved the place, what do you think? Should we stay here every monday? Ok. Come back au Chat Noir, next Monday. Sign up 8ish. The show starts 9ish! On the italian biological clock.